Friday, April 23, 2010

The blog's not dead yet

OK, so my last post was on Feb. 4th and now it is April 23rd.

One former student declared my blog officially dead. In those great words of Monty Python, "I'm not dead yet"

Some explanation...
Much of my inspiration for this blog comes directly from teaching lessons. Often during a lesson I hit on an idea that is "blogworthy."

For 8 weeks in the middle of this semester, I was granted a half sabbatical to work on the Simply Singing Books. During that time, not only was I not teaching (fewer ideas popping up) but I also wanted to devote a lot of time/energy to the books. Like most projects, they take up more time and energy than I thought they would.

I also worked on some other projects including writing a new fanfare, not for trombone week but the UT Austin trombone choir for this summer's ITF. If they like, you'll hear them play it. As requested, it is basically a medley of Texas tunes. I wrote it for solo quartet over trombone octet.

I also invested quite a few afternoons and evenings in one of my non-musical pursuits/obsessions: coaching a FIRST LEGO League robotics team. The kids I worked with (ages 9-13 on our team) won the state championship and recently competed at the FIRST World Festival in Atlanta. Great experience but very consuming. Not much time left over for blogging.

However, I hope to get it moving again.